Five Ways to Connect Your Child to Careers: New Family Guides for All Grade Levels
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STEM Next is excited to introduce three new resources designed to help families support career-connected learning at home. Organized into guides for elementary, middle, and high school grade levels, each resource offers age-appropriate guidance that helps adults encourage young people to think about, talk about and begin exploring their future career paths.
These tools include practical tips like conversation starters, at-home STEM activities, suggested books to read together, and, for older students, tips on how to help them identify how their skills align with potential careers.
Elementary School
In elementary school, families are encouraged to point out career connections in their everyday lives, and spark their curiosity by asking questions like, “How do you think the vegetables get from the farmer’s field to the grocery store?” This guide also includes activity ideas and books to read together. Career exploration at this stage is all about fun and curiosity.
Download: Five Ways for Families to Connect Youth to Careers: Elementary School
Middle School
In middle school, a unique activity we share is to compare experiences across generations, exploring the different technologies and changes that have occurred in the time between your childhood and the young person’s lifetime. Discuss what came before that invention with parents, grandparents, and children. Then, use the internet to research what careers are required to build a similar invention.
Download: Five Ways for Families to Connect Youth to Careers: Middle School
High School
In high school, families are encouraged to have meaningful discussions with youth about failure and how to overcome it. The fear of failure is real for many teens, yet failure is an important part of STEM learning and career development. Families can help a young person normalize failure as a part of learning by sharing examples of how they have had setbacks and failures at work and school.
Download: Five Ways for Families to Connect Youth to Careers: High School
These are just some of the tips outlined in these resources. Check them out to see all the fun and meaningful ways you can connect youth to careers throughout their childhoods.
Looking for other Family Engagement Resources? Check out these tools and articles:
STEM Family Engagement Planning Tool
Family Engagement Spotlights 2024
A New Framework for Career-Connected Learning Beyond the Classroom
The Broken Marketplace: America’s School To Work Crisis
Keeping the Beat Activity Bundle with Family Engagement
The post Five Ways to Connect Your Child to Careers: New Family Guides for All Grade Levels appeared first on STEM Next.
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